The Top Hacked LinkedIn Passwords Include '1234' and 'Sex'

Last week's theft of 6.5 million LinkedIn user passwords not only once again demonstrated the threat the hacking community poses in acquiring our personal data; but it also highlights the sheer ignorance and stupidity of millions of people on the internet who are not taking necessary precaution in protecting themselves on the web.

As more and more of our lives are broadcast on the internet and everything from our bank statements, credit card details, personal information, contact details are now stored in the cloud, you'd have thought there would be a greater intelligence out there to take more care in creating a safe, secure, yet memorable password. If the LinkedIn hack is anything to go by, that notion seems to evade most people. Created by cyber security firm Rapid7, the below infographic shows the astounding apathy to protection online and lists some of the most popular passwords accessed in the hack; a what's not to do when coming up with a sequence of letters used to protect your online identity. And no, '1234', 'god' and 'sex' does not constitute a good password.

In an attempt to “help make the internet a better place” and encouraging those stuck in their particular internet browser ways to upgrade to more up-to-date software, Australian online retailer Kogan.com has started a scheme to ‘tax’ those using Microsoft’s long-running (and painfully out-dated) Internet Explorer 7 to purchase items with a 6.8% charge placed on top of anything they buy through the store.

Will We Soon Need To “Opt-In” At Broadband Sign-Up To View Online Pornography?

Under-18s may soon have to pluck up the courage to ask their parents to remove that block on internet pornography if ministers of the UK government get their way in approving a change in the law that would give parents even more control over the type of content their broadband provider provides.

Might The Days Of Facebook Stalking Be Numbered?

Having already introduced changes to Facebook Chat that sees users informed when a message has been seen by a recipient – to the chagrin of avoidant types – now Facebook has announced an overhaul to Groups which allows users to identify exactly who and who has not seen certain posts. Were the company to roll out the feature to the rest of the site, could Facebook ‘stalking’ soon be a thing of the past?

Judge orders divorcing couple to share Facebook passwords

Most divorce cases usually end in the sharing of tangible property: the contrived arguments over who has rightful ownership of what, digging through the obligatory fact that everything is shared to land on a conclusion of individual items. But this is probably the first time where a court case has resulted in the two sides being ordered to share their Facebook passwords.

FBI Proposes To Use Social Network Behaviour To 'Predict' Crimes

In becoming ever more tactile in waging war against the criminals of this world, the FBI is asking companies to develop software that will be able to 'scrape' posts, tweets and messages for key 'danger' words and phrases from social network accounts, in addition to monitoring a persons' behaviour through acquiring information from the public domain in order to better track criminal security threats or situations. Succinctly, the Bureau is asking would-be contractors to come up with a software that can “enhance its techniques for collecting and sharing 'open source' actionable intelligence”.